In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants (1914)

Record Details:

Title:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants
Date:
1914
Publisher:
New York, Appeal Printing Co.
Volume:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants : record volume 5
Leaf #:
000390
Language:
English
Collection:
Government & Law and Early Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
These seven volumes contain the testimonies and supporting documents from the U.S. District Court's antitrust lawsuit against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). Formed in 1908, the MPPC (sometimes referred to asœ"the Edison Trust" or just "the Trust") sought to control the American film industry through pooling patents and demanding that producers and exhibitors acquire licenses to those patents. Independent producers and exhibitors, who refused to license the patents, argued that the MPPC was an unlawful monopoly. In 1912 and 1913, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania heard testimonies from both MPPC members, such as Siegmund Lubin, and "Independents" who later became Hollywood moguls, such as William Fox. Ultimately, in 1915, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the MPPC in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and spelled the end for the already weakening MPPC. -- Eric Hoyt, 2012
Date Added:
September 21, 2023
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

2840 E. Boehringer, Direct Examination. bute it, and this is a sixteen page weekly program, for each day of the week. Q. In this booklet are yon able to sell space to other advertisers? A. Yes, sir. Q. Now, Mr. Boehringer, have yon, during the period that yon have owned the Columbia Theatre been familiar with the prices of motion picture service? A. Oh, yes. Q. In your town? A. Yes, sir. Q. How do the prices yon arc now paying for motion picture service from the General Film Company's exchange, compare with the prices yon were paying Mr. Pearce's exchange? A. Well, I am paying more money, but then I am getting more reels. Q. How many reels were you getting from Mr. Pearce's exchange? A. I started with Mr. Pearce with eight reels, and finally run it up to twenty-one. Q. What were you paying for the twenty-one reels? A. I was paying for the twenty-one reels, I think it was $70. Yes, $70.* Q. How many reels are you using now? A. I am getting now, forty-two. Q. What do you pay for the forty-two? A. I pay fllO and express, both ways. Before that, you know, I got less reels than that because I was not able to ^et twenty-one. I got eight reels, and paid $40.00 a week. When I first started in business. Q. Do you run unlicensed pictures from time to time in your houses? A. Oh, yes, occasionally. Q. How long have you been doing that? A. Well, T expect it has been eight or ten months. Since I commenced and started the other house. The second house. Q. Are there any other unlicensed houses in your town? A. Yes, sir. Q. How many of them are there? A. There is one of them there which occasionally opens. They show the Warner .Feature Films, and there is another one there uses the combined films of the Universal and Mutual Program. They show six reels a day. That is the large house there. Q. What is the seating capacity of that? A. They have six hundred or six hundred and twenty-five seats. Q. How many more licensed houses are there in town besides the Columbia and Dreamland? A. That is all. It is a small town, you know.